


Awful Lot of Medicine

by maplemood



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Alcohol, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Marriage, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-07-30 19:03:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20102119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/pseuds/maplemood
Summary: She samples it on the regular is the thing. Wind, rain, sunshine. Moonshine if she ain’t swapped moonshine out for starlight and starlight if she has. Not so much as’ll have Persephone falling-down drunk—that she saves for behind closed doors, mostly, where her husband can take to his office with a jaw set tight like a snare and the lips over that jaw zipped tighter. Just enough to warm her belly and her head pleasant-like, enough so as she feels halfway through winter already, halfway home.





	Awful Lot of Medicine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).

> For your "how we stocked the bar" prompt. I hope you enjoy it. <3

Now, Persephone ain’t what most folks would call a natural-born businesswoman, not by any shot long or short, but that don’t mean she don’t take an _ interest. _That don’t mean she ain’t the one seeing to the stocking of shelves and the topping off of glasses, that she ain’t got any sense in her, sense of when to cut a brother off and when to keep his drinks coming, which of the old song-and-dance routines he’ll be craving soon as he clocks off the graveyard shift. Sense, too, of how to gather things up and put ‘em to their best use.

She hoards the best in sunshine liquors, does Persephone, leastways the best she can get for cheap. Mother’s daughter and husband’s wife; she knows what she’s about. Always has, and could be it’s the only thing Persephone did know before pulling up stakes for Hadestown. Could be the thing she’s worked at the most, honed to a point, right razor-sharp, down here in the dark.

This all to say Persephone’s particular about her inventory. _ Stickler, _ you’d call her if you were of a mind to be cautious, and if you weren’t and you didn’t much care for the head between your shoulders you’d say _ Boozehound. _

She samples it on the regular is the thing. Wind, rain, sunshine. Moonshine if she ain’t swapped moonshine out for starlight and starlight if she has. Not so much as’ll have Persephone falling-down drunk—that she saves for behind closed doors, mostly, where her husband can take to his office with a jaw set tight like a snare and the lips over that jaw zipped tighter. Just enough to warm her belly and her head pleasant-like, enough so as she feels halfway through winter already, halfway home. 

And of course it didn’t used to be this way, didn’t used to be Persephone craved the strong stuff so bad and didn’t used to be her husband took those ornery drunken spells to heart (didn’t used to be Persephone drank in spite of the old man, to spite him). What’s a girl to do now; she dwells on the past plenty enough but she don’t live there, and neither does he. So—a girl soldiers on, she drinks up, and if she catches herself lingering outside that office door every now and again she pays it never no mind.

Sunshine tastes freshest. Moonshine’s what puts a mist in Persephone’s eyes. She’s worked out a system, like: the day he comes for her, be it the first of September proper or the plumb middle of August, she spends the whole ride down seeing to her husband. Some fooling around on the plush train benches if Persephone’s in the mood, some back-and-forth if she’s in a mood, narrowing her eyes at his grease-rimed fingernails—don’t ever all quite come out no matter how hard he scrubs and he does scrub; Persephone figures there’s grit from before _ her _ time worked down in there—and smacking his hand away when it musses the nice arrangement she’s made of her hair. On the platform she makes sure he sees fit to spirit her straight into his black car; meantime, Hermes and a couple porters, ones whose palms Persephone’s already greased, unload the baggage car of the crates she’s had Hermes smuggle aboard. Persephone takes no more than three down every autumn. Might be in possession of a mean streak a mile wide but she ain’t so cruel as to play her husband for a fool. 

The crates come from her cousin Cy’s stock or from Persephone’s own. There’ve been years she’s kept a nice little operation going on Ma’s property, one smallish still plus the dandelion wine brewed up at the house, though more years than not the load of summer work otherwise is too much. Those years she imports a whole lot of moonshine, clear as a summer night sky and apt to leave your head as hot as one. It all goes into the bar’s backroom to wait ‘till nighttime when Persephone comes with her key, thirst aching powerful at the back of her throat. She slides off lids already pried loose, unpacks musty straw, takes stock of the new spread.

Sunshine you get in three degrees. Light’ll put you in mind of a cool spring morning, hot of a summer’s day. Blazing, go easy on blazing if you can. Got a kick like the end times to it, pure furnace heat. Persephone fetches three little glasses, pours three quick slugs. One, two, three.

Can’t bring a long summer but at least she brings the booze. Thank you kindly, sister. 

‘Course, you’ll find stills a-plenty in Hadestown, assuming you got time on your hands and a sense of where to look. Bringing in only three crates a season Persephone’s gotta make up the difference somehow; corn liquor and bathtub gin’ll do for those who ain’t so picky as to how they’ll take their succor. For the finicky ones, the homesick ones...wind cools crisp on your tongue, rain takes a different flavor with every fresh batch, starlight you better be careful of, silvery-strong as it is. Moonshine speaks just fine for itself. Persephone risks one sip in sampling.

Well. Sip or two. She stays sober enough to pack up and lock up, sober enough—just about—to see herself home. 

She knows what she’s about is the thing. She knows there ain’t no shame in taking an interest and spending a little extra time on a thing you’ve built, same as she knows the whole thing’s built on spite. Spite, guilt, and a damn heavy load of regret, and Persephone knows her lonely self won’t grow short on lonesomeness by drinking. 

See, but the drinking comes easier than the talking. That’s the pure truth of it.

After, sneaking through her husband’s doors, back into her husband’s bed—hers too, though it don’t feel as such being wide as a continental shelf, empty-cold even with the two of them to claim their separate sides—Persephone comes upon him, her husband, upright in bed with the lamps on and his finger in one of her dimestore novels like this is some kind of regular occurrence with them, which she supposes it’s getting to be. Going on what, a century now? Two?

“You better not crack the spine.” Her belly sloshes full. “I ain’t even halfway through yet.”

He takes his finger out, checks to see which page he’s on before flicking the cover shut. It’s one of the bosomy ones, lady with skin creamy white to Persephone’s brown cozying up to a tall dark stranger. Hades, who it must be noted ain’t either short or light, says, “Out late.”

Big man, her husband. Don’t the shadows cast from the lamps do their damnedest to make him bigger, the crags of him, the barrel-chested thrum of his voice. Persephone’s warmed well up by this point, knows he knows, knows he knows she knows.

Close-mouthed, though. Hades, he don’t waste time in idle talk, keeps to himself and themselves to themselves. Old-school mannered that way, but he’s gotta be stewing. And Persephone, Persephone’s in possession of a mean streak a mile wide and a mouth dried out from drink. She saunters to his side of the bed. She bends down low. She lays one on him, good and deep.

Hades, it must also be noted, takes less than a long split-second to start kissing back. Gets his hand gripped in the hairs sprouting at the tender nape of her neck, pulls Persephone lower ‘cause she hates his hands and his dirty nails messing up her hair like he hates having her come home smelling like a still, says it makes him go green around the gills. Used to make her laugh—don’t Hades hold his liquor better than anybody, and with all the mealtimes he spends in the office she figures his stomach’s clocked out for good anyhow.

“Woman,” he breaks off to grunt (Hades being the only one out of the whole family to call her so, the only one who once told her she had a good head for business like he meant it and it meant something.) “you don’t fit in my bed.”

“Must be going blind, then.” Acres of cratered blankets, don’t she know what he means, really, don’t she shove it out of her way. “You like that, lover?” Persephone asks. She ain’t so cruel as to play her husband for a fool except when she is; maybe she’s a little green around the gills herself, maybe she’s thinking about his big hands blue-veined like marble, thinking about how as once, when she was young and stupid, she’d have fed right out of those hands if he’d asked it of her. Thinking how she needs to be at the bar, better yet up top. Thinking about fall coming early and summer late, sunshine bottled and wind canned in a jar, Persephone says, “Like my taste?”

Hades lets her go. Rough so her head snaps back a little. Persephone sways sideways, sneering, the taste of moonshine and his cool graveyard breath a slick damp on her lips. Look at him, there’s something almost...wouldn’t call it...something damn near _ fascinating _ about his face, the way it goes steely bedrock and kicked dog all at once. Didn’t used to be this way. Goddamn. She needs a drink, sunshine blazing down her throat. The goods, the good stuff, an end times drink to burn the slate clean. 

Persephone watches her husband wipe his thumb across his lips. Rough-like again so there’s no doubt, not one bit. “Was a time—” Hades bears down on that _was, _looking at her the whole while, “—was a time I’d drink it out of your shoe.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1.) "Cousin Cy," aka Dionysus. 
> 
> 2.) Drinking--champagne, specifically--out of a woman's slipper became a symbol of decadence in the early 1900s.


End file.
